MORE LIKE IT...

Finally, all of my area put together a decent day Thursday that included the emergence of sunshine, lighter winds, and highs in the mid to upper 50s. The beautiful thing is that with an impending turn to southerly winds, we've initiated a warming trend that brings even warmer weather as the weekend unfolds.

The satellite loop shows the storm, that's kept the weather a bit unsettled the past few day lifting northeast into New England. The back edge of the trough is over central Iowa at the time of the image, slowly pushing east. The next system is entering the Pacific Northwest, acting as a kicker to boot the east coast storm into Canada.

Where the clouds are visible, is where the storm track is. On paper, it looks like this at 500mb Saturday.

Watching the progression of the 500mb heights. You can see the ridge with its warmer air coming over us this weekend, but quickly departing as the next trough brings cooler weather back to the Midwest Monday and Tuesday. That's what's known as progressive flow, with short wave troughs coming and going on a regular basis.

Often times, when systems are moving so quickly, it's hard to ingest the moisture necessary to get much in the way of organized precipitation. That will be the case with the next disturbance Sunday night. It's looking like a dry frontal passage, with the primary impacts being wind and 2 days of rising temperatures ahead of the front, and 2 days of cooler readings behind it.

One little fly in the ointment comes late Saturday night or Sunday morning in the north. With the next system knocking on the door at that time, there is going to be some elevated warm air advection driven by a 40-50kt low level jet streak. It's most pronounced north of a warm front inching towards HWY 30 and eventually HWY 20. There is a small signal that some showers or storm could pop in that area. Being elevated, they would have a chance of dropping a quick burst of rain and perhaps some small hail. At this point, confidence in rain developing is low to moderate at best. (20-30 percent). If they form, they should be out of the north Sunday morning, setting the stage for a mild afternoon. Models are certainly not excited about rain prospects, showing this for amounts Saturday night through Sunday.

The EURO

The GFS

As for weekend temperatures, highs Saturday should peak around 63-68. Sunday is even warmer, with the range increasing from 72 north to 78 south. As dry as the air is, that could even be a couple degrees too low.

Sunday night the next cold front arrives and down go temperatures once again. Winds will also rev up out of the NW, especially Monday, exceeding 30 mph. Temperatures will likely peak around midday and hold steady or slowly fall after highs in the mid 50s north to low 60s south. Tuesday will be another one of those crisp days with highs ranging from the upper 40s NE to mid 50s SW.

This up and down pattern of temperatures should continue through Easter weekend, but models are having a hard time with the intensity and placement of the next potential rainmaker, with the window most likely around Thursday or Friday. With poor agreement on the location of mesocale details such as warm fronts and cold fronts, the temperature forecast is currently a bit muddled at this distance. I'm seeing anything for 50s to 70s. It will take a few more days to get that hashed out.

One trend that I'm liking long term is the MJO (Madden Julien Oscillation) entering phase 7 around or just after Easter.

Phase 7, in what I perceive as a neutral (to very weak La Nina), correlates to a 500mb pattern with a trough over the west and a significant ridge over SC Canada. That lends itself to strong SW flow over the Midwest and what could be a multi day stretch of mild to warm temperatures.

The 5-day heights on the EURO ensemble mean below are in line with what the phase 7 500mb anomalies above would teleconnect to.

The 5-day temperature departures in the EURO April 20-25 are very much on the warm side, which is to be expected if the teleconnections line up as currently indicated

So there you go, for once more good news to pass around than bad. I'm in! Have a solid weekend and Roll weather...TS